I would be disgusted if my relatives became Episcopalians because they felt pressured by me or anyone else; or because they loved the grandeur of the liturgy and the hymns, or the majestic gothic architecture, or the sublime phrases of the historic prayers; or because they needed to belong to the church historically associated with the Founding Fathers, or corporate America, or campus radicalism, or some other famed association. My clinical observation would be that they were maladjusted and indecent.

There is little pressure on Americans today to belong to any religion. You don't have to be an Episcopalian, for example, in order to be accepted into school, get a license or passport, or be served in a restaurant. If you disbelieve in the cardinal tenets of a given faith, you are free to withdraw from that faith community and form a new one, based upon a shared covenant of values and beliefs. This is what is great about America.

In recent years the Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA has changed its Trinitarian "spots" for a unitarian theology. The Holy Trinity is referred to only as "doctrine" rather than the living God of revelation. The individual Persons of the Trinity are defined each as an "image" of God that can be exchanged with any other that better suits the mind of the individual. Jesus can be "Mother" as well as "Son", depending upon which concept is more comforting or uplifting. The "Father" is seldom mentioned out of deference to the current feminist temper, but He is begrudgingly acknowledged as something like a "source" or "first principle". And the Holy Spirit is typically referred to as the "spirit" of public confrontation. When the Church defies its historic tenets or otherwise publicly fouls its nest, this is taken as a self-authenticating proof of the presence of deity.

A monadic deity who changes faces and names to suit the needs or whims of the worshiper is precisely the god of Unitarianism. That's nothing to be ashamed of - for Unitarians. They're up front and quite happy about it. While they seek to win converts to their belief, they do not insist that other religions change and adopt their theological concept of deity. Most are too principled for that.

Many Episcopalians have drifted into a stealth unitarianism. While they would deny this, they cannot argue based upon any fact. There is simply no way to declare an organic continuity between the historic confessions of the great churches and the current syncretism of the mainline denominations, and in particular the Episcopal Church. It's dishonest to pretend there is.

The majority of Episcopal leadership, lay and ordained, hate historic Christianity. It is what they profess to save the world from. By their reckoning every historic evil is traceable to Christianity - if not directly to "literalistic" application of its sacred texts, then indirectly to the ideological cover for oppression derived from Christian doctrine.

Just for starters, think how General Convention 2006 moved to save the Jews from the New Testament, and the whole non-Christian world from the uniqueness of Christ. These are just the latest innovations, but they point to a developed pattern.

In the seventies female priests became icons not of Christ but of anti-sexism. What is the historic source of sexism? Old Christianity, and in particular that manifesto of patriarchalism known as the Bible. While not all female clerics are radical feminists, the ones who rise in the organization are. With the election of the new Presiding Bishop it is clear that the "priest as anti-type" has become the public face of Episcopalianism. It can't be an accident that in her first sermon the saving Christ was proclaimed as "Mother". We are saving people from the God of the Bible.

Following on the heels of the feminist movement is the gay liberation movement. And what is the Episcopal Church liberating gays from? From the seething God of the Old Testament and the malevolent automatons who over the years have been controlled by Him. The controversy surrounding this particular movement is taken as manifest proof of the Spirit, based upon a now familiar precedent, or perhaps a "familiar spirit".

"Blame Christianity first" is the subtext of modern liberal religion. Episcopalians insist upon heading up this parade because, when it comes to religious pageantry, we just do it so well! It is part of our historic character as members of the aristocracy.

One might ask, if historic Christianity is so potentially lethal, why not disassociate from it - visibly and historically? Why not leave and form a newer, purer, truer faith? Why not become Unitarians in good conscience, instead of constantly justifying ourselves through rituals of self-loathing?

Perhaps this is the reason: Take the God of the Bible out of the picture and today's Episcopal religion has nothing to save anyone from.

---Canon Gary L'Hommedieu is canon theologian for Pastoral Care at St. Luke's Cathedral in Orlando, Florida